


You

by Sir_Bedevere



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 15:28:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4630422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sir_Bedevere/pseuds/Sir_Bedevere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s gentle, far gentler than Javert would ever have expected of him. Then again, he has never known this man. He thought he did, once. Now he knows he has never truly known a thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You

He’s gentle, far gentler than Javert would ever have expected of him. Then again, he has never known this man. He thought he did, once. Now he knows he has never truly known a thing.

Valjean’s hands are calloused on the palms and fingers, years of hauling ropes having made their mark. The callouses are hard but his hands are soft, not the hands of a villain at all. When he leans over Javert, to help him sit or hand him something, his sleeves ride up and Javert sees the thick scars that encircle his wrists, from years of rubbing handcuffs. In his delirium, he once thought to reach out and touch them, but he does not. He thinks that Valjean catches him looking though, and although the other man’s brow twitches, he does not say a word.

In truth, he has not said very much at all. 

He only tends to his charge and he smiles sometimes, although Javert does not understand why he does either.

His memory of what happened that night, the night after the barricades, is vague. The pictures are blurred, bleeding into one another like watercolours. 

_Valjean had him at his mercy and he let him go._

_Javert tried to arrest him and he couldn’t. He could not touch the man._

_He stumbled through the streets, and he did not see a thing._

_He stood on the bridge and cried._

He knows that he cried, the feel of tears on his face like he had not known since he was a boy, the taste of salt in his mouth and his eyes stinging. 

Then falling. He was falling. Falling into blackness, a cold, cold blackness.

And then a ceiling, white and clean, bright above him and a face. A bearded face, with blue eyes, and warm hands. Sometimes he had recognised the face and sometimes he had not, until the day – or was it a night? – that he realised he knew the face after all.

Valjean. Jean Valjean.

“You need to be still,” Valjean had said, when Javert tried to jerk himself away, “You are not well.”

“What-” he had asked, his voice a rasp that he did not know, “How is it that I am here?”

“I pulled you from the river,” Valjean said, “You were barely alive. I brought you here.”

Javert remembered then. The end of his life. It was _supposed_ to be the end.

“You would have done better to let me die,” he said, “You owe me nothing.”

“You are not my enemy. You never were.”

And now he grows stronger, but Valjean does not let him leave the house. He is permitted to the chair in the study, by the fire, and in the room he has been given as his own. One day he ventures to the kitchen and finds Valjean making soup, chopping carrots and onions and humming. He did not know that he hummed.

“You are tired,” Valjean says simply, ushering him from the room and back into the study, “I do not believe you know how tired you truly are.”

“What do you mean?”

“I am not the only one who has been running.”

Valjean lets him sit and he allows him the newspaper, and as many books as he can read. Mostly though, when he is too exhausted to do anything else, Javert thinks.

He thinks on his station and he wonders if anyone has missed him these past few weeks. No one has come looking, not that they would ever look here. He wonders why that fact does not concern him more.

He thinks on his life, the choices he has made and those he did not have. Is it irony that he should end up here, that despite every choice he has made, life has conspired to show him how wrong he has been? He should be inconsolable. But the water – the river has washed him clean. It is blasphemy, to compare himself to Christ. But, if he is Christ that makes Jean Valjean his Baptist, his own John who pushed him into the water, but who also pulled him out. It cannot be wrong.

_It cannot be wrong._

The first time they eat together, Valjean takes slow, measured bites, chewing carefully before he swallows, his eyes on his plate and nothing else. Javert has seen it before; the intense, focused eating of one who has known what it is to be hungry and does not take the latest meal as a given right. He feels an odd twinge in his breast; he had not believed 24601, who protested that his family had been starving when he committed his crime, and he had not let the man forget it. Yet here was that man now, the evidence of his past life laid out in front of him like a book, and he was sharing what he had with a man who had called him – and there had been so many names – a liar.

“Are you not hungry?” Valjean asks. He has glanced up for long enough to see Javert has not touched his plate.

“Why are you doing this?” Javert demands again, and he thinks that he sounds desperate, “Why am I here, sharing your table and your house?”

“You have no one else.”

It cuts him, to hear the truth so simply spoken, and he pushes his plate away. How dare this – this – man – presume to know him.

“Who am I to you, 24601?” he snaps, and he pretends he does not see the blow land on Valjean, “The man who would have seen you hung a thousand times over, if I had got my hands on you. Who am I, if not your executioner?”

Valjean does not speak for a moment, and the distress on his face becomes increasingly clear as he begins to turn red. Javert already regrets what he has said.

“I-”

“You are the one I was supposed to save,” Valjean murmurs, “I always thought it was Fantine, and when I could not save her, I saved Cosette instead. I see now that she was someone I helped along the way, on the way to you. It was always you. The Lord would not have taken me to that bridge, that night, if I was not meant to be there.”

_It was always you._

Javert’s head spins and he stands up too quickly, stumbling back from the table. It is too much. He does not deserve it, not from this man. 

He is in his chamber before he knows how he got there, and he locks the door. Later, he pretends he does not hear Valjean stop outside and listen. 

It is a week, perhaps, before he can shake free of his shame and face Valjean once more. The man is patient, so bloody patient and forgiving.

“I do not deserve your time,” he forces out, his thoughts foreign things to be on his tongue, “I am nothing now, of no use to anyone.”

“We shall see.”

One day, Valjean is on his knees in the garden, digging over a flowerbed. He stops and takes his shirt off, to feel the sun on his back. He has scars, so many scars, and Javert finds himself looking, looking, looking. Is he looking at the scars? He does not know. 

“What are you growing?”

Valjean turns to him, a smudge of dirt on his cheek and his arms filthy up to the elbow. He is covered in sweat and his tattoos are stark against his chest. 

“Roses, perhaps. Cosette likes roses. What do you like best?”

“I have no opinions on flowers. I will like whatever you like.”

Valjean laughs and shakes his head, “That will never do. Come here and you can help. You will feel no closer to the Lord than when you have your hands in the earth.”

Javert does join him, rolling up his shirt sleeves because he will not be removing it. Valjean’s arm is warm as it brushes his, and his hands brush his hands when he gives him things to hold. 

Javert does not feel close to the Lord in that moment. The Lord would not approve of the things that he is thinking.

“You’re very red,” Valjean says, concerned, “Perhaps you should sit down again. I can finish this.”

Javert tries to cook something once, when Valjean has been out for the day with his daughter. He is not adept at the art and after he burns the onions, it all continues to go badly. Valjean comes back to find him hurling a ruined pot of soup into the garden. 

“I have never needed to cook for myself, let alone someone else,” Javert says first, before the other man can pass comment or laugh, “I do not truly know what I am doing.”

His eyes are downturned, so he does not see Valjean approach until he is stood beside him. When he dares to look up, he is holding his breath. Valjean is so close that he could count the hairs in his beard. 

“You tried to cook for me?”

“You have been occupied. I thought I could provide for us on this-”

He stops because Valjean has reached up to Javert and tucked a wayward strand of hair behind his ear. Valjean’s hand lingers and Javert cannot breathe.

“Thank you.”

Then Valjean has moved away, pulling more things from the cupboards and instructing Javert to sit down and watch. 

Javert does watch, but not the cookery.

When Valjean eventually kisses him, Javert is not expecting it. They are sitting by the fire, late into the evening, and he has a book, and Valjean is writing a letter. Javert is stealing glances but the man seems perfectly composed, his hand slow at the writing but sure, his tongue peeking from between his lips. 

“You were not always literate, were you?”

The question leaves his mouth before he can stop it, and he blushes a little at his own impertinence.

“No. I learned in prison, would you believe it.”

“How?”

“Someone had a book. Not allowed, of course, but he would read it to me and I would follow until I began to recognise the shapes. Then I began to scratch them into the earth, over and over again. It took a long time. I do not believe I am built for learning.”

“Admirable indeed,” Javert said, “But I disagree. A teacher of your excellence is indeed meant for learning too. It is not your fault that you were deprived.”

Valjean is up and beside his chair before Javert can blink. He kneels down and takes Javert’s face in his hands, staring into his eyes.

“Do you truly mean what you say? Do you understand it?”

“Of – of course,” Javert stutters and he wonders if Valjean can feel his blood thrumming frantically in his neck, “Do you not believe me?”

“Oh, I believe you,” Valjean laughs, and then he has pulled Javert towards him and is kissing him and it is all Javert can do to cling onto the older man’s shoulders. 

He is damned, from this very moment.

He does not care.

Timidly - and when has he ever been timid? – he threads his fingers into Valjean’s hair and lets the man coax his mouth open, and he does not know how long they remain like that but when Valjean pulls away he is flushed and smiling, and he is crying. 

Javert reaches up and catches a tear on his fingers. He does not understand this. Valjean does not mind, and kisses the palm of his hand, holding it to his lips, and Javert shivers. 

“You – you want –”

“Oh yes. I want,” Valjean says, and Javert has never seen him looking so happy. He has done this. He has made him so. 

A thought occurs to Javert.

“Is this what you meant, when you said it was supposed to be? Did you know?”

“Yes. Perhaps. Will you have me?” Valjean pleads, his hands on Javert’s hands. He leans forwards and rests his forehead against Javert’s, and Javert feels Valjean’s breath ghost across his lips. Let them be damned, he thinks. They have both lived a lifetime of punishment already. Javert dares to move first, to be brave, to press his lips to Valjean’s and whisper.

“It was always you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Vana for the read through and the thumbs up. This is my first Les Mis fic and I am a tad in love with these guys.


End file.
